Free Napoleon's Roads by David Brooks

– but not actually? – from behind doorways, from the arms of our chairs, from the pillows beside us, rounding corners in front of us or falling into step beside us, staring at us from bus seats, looking up from desks or turning towards us in crowds with such intimate expressions, opennesses , a recognition that seemed to go through us, to penetrate immediately the heart of us, so that it was all that we could do to hold back from rising and, leaving our bags, stepping off from the bus, walking into the crowd to follow them. Not that they were all golden, all beings of light or beauty, for there were the darker ones, too, creatures of garbage, creatures of stone, bleak creatures, creatures of hate, creatures of emptiness, weakening creatures, creatures of drowning (and so many did, so many drowned).
    What they were, what it was that had so fertilised the seedbeds of our desire to create such an astonishing blossoming, to cause so exotic and alluring a mould upon our minds and spirits is hard enough to say, but harder still, in so many ways, is it to say why it was that they left. What had we said? What rule, what law had we broken? Was it the hope itself that somehow, in all that, began again, as if all such beings can only be beings of hopelessness? Was it that tiny sprout of green confidence, there amongst the asphalt grey? All that can be said is that, slowly, reluctantly, we came back to ourselves, and were now somewhat embarrassed by what had been, by what we had claimed to see, and had now to brace ourselves, as someone must recompose themselves after great laughter or unbounded sorrow, unbounded passion, and prepare themselves for the street, the people in the next room, relegating these delicate and extraordinary creatures – that had kissed us, that had taken our faces in their hands, that had come to the place just at the centre of our breastbone and undone the button there, and pushed their soft and exquisite tongues into the very secret and melting hearts of us, or passed, momentarily, their hot, intoxicating breath about our ears, or left about our necks and throats the kisses like clustered grapes with the mist of dawn still on them – again to the realm of the unthinkable. What had we said, what had we done? Was it, perhaps, as simple, and as complicated, as a single word, a word which, having long forgotten it, we uttered too often and too loudly in our delight, our uncontainable relief at so suddenly, so unexpectedly finding it again, a word that, even as I write of them, I can hardly – dare I? – bring myself to say?
    In the Centre of the World
    A moon has appeared in a tree. High up among the leaves and branches, yet visible from every direction, almost as if the leaves and the branches were not there at all. Not the real moon, which is still shining brightly above, but a small, perfect, different moon, right in the middle, silvery white with most of its craters intact, so like the real moon that it seems wrong to say it isn’t real also.
    Someone from the village has found it and alerted others, and now a small crowd has gathered. Almost everyone is there. Some people try to reach it using ladders and rakes, but it is so high up that when they step into the tree to take hold of it the thin upper branches bend too much, or start to break beneath their weight. Some – the very lightest, the best climbers, the children – can actually touch it, but only just, with the tips of their fingers, and say that it feels like a small, wet, sandy rock at midnight, with the shine of the other moon on it. Others bring torches, as if light from something else might somehow explain it. Still others throw stones and pine cones and clods of earth, as always some people will do. But everything bounces right off it with a quiet and solid, non-metallic sound – the moon is hardly affected – and pretty soon they simply stand and stare like everyone else. A moon, a perfect moon, way